A Broken Companion
by Extraordinary Invisible Lights
Summary: Bella was set on going to the meadow and ended up twisting her ankle on the way. With the hole in her chest suffocating her, all she could do was sit beside a tree and waste away. Artemis soon finds her and now the goddess is set on keeping her as one of her hunters. Too bad the other gods gained an interest in Bella too.


Artemis' head twitched to the side, the birds twittering about a woman, hauntingly beautiful but dull and unresponsive. She looked over to the campsite, seeing her Hunters carrying on with their lives as they set the camp. Fixing the tents and refilling their water supply with the lake nearby. Knowing no immediate danger was near, Artemis leaped towards where she heard the girl was.

She blinked as she saw a brunette with glazed, dead eyes, leaning against a tree, her tears still flowing down her cheeks as she stared at the leaves littering the forest ground. She recognized the pain inside the girl, saw the agonized soul, and tried not to flinch or growl in anger. Another maiden stabbed by a careless man.

The goddess walked slowly towards her, making sure that her body language screamed nothing but curiosity and concern. And although she was already in the girl's line of sight, the girl gave no sign of seeing anything remotely human. No panicky looks or blinking in the hunter's direction, nothing but blank stares not even thrown in her direction.

This worried the goddess. Even a brokenhearted maiden was able to register emotions, and she had never encountered someone who looked ready to give up like this. Others were angry, of course, and other were depressed. But not to this extent. It almost scared the goddess in a sense that she might not even have the power to pull the girl back up from her isolated hole.

Artemis risked walking closer than she would have tried with any of her other hunters in this condition, though; they were more vocal and all the more angered than the female before her.

"What happened, child?" Artemis asked gently as she crouched in front of the girl, her eyes looking for any recognition or any fear whatsoever, but got nothing but a turn of the head from the girl. "Who has done this to you?"

A flash of pain, deep agonizing pain, washed through the girl's face as she rasped a name, "Edward." She muttered, her eyes squeezing shut as she gasped his name again, "Edward, _Edward, __**Edward**__. EdwardEdwardEdward." _She rapidly chanted, tears flowing down from her cheeks as she tried to breathe, unable to say anything else. She gasped and stumbled over his name, her eyes staying shut as she rocked back and forth against the tree. Soon, she was slamming her head against the tree in an attempt to make the flashing memories and echoing words disappear.

_'I can't stay away from you anymore.'_

_'I love you.'_

_'What's wrong, love?'_

_'You… don't want me?'_

_'..__**No**__.'_

"Stop—_stop. _I love you, don't leave. _Edward, Edward, __**Edward.**_" She whimpered, gasping and rasping his name as she tried desperately to hold onto her sanity. Her words started to garble, her voice rushed and breathless, "Don't leave me-please don't leave me. Edward, Edward, _Edward_." Her voice was desperate, her hands clenched into painful, nail-digging fists around her knees, which were pulled up to her chest in a fetal position.

"I love you! _I love you! Stay!" _she then screeched, her voice octaves higher than ever as she desperately called out to her illusion of a lover. He was gone, but his shadow will never seem to leave. Not until she will learn to let go, but she doesn't even want to, and seemed to even want to hold on tighter. She clenched her hands together, tighter, her nails digging into her flesh as she continued to plead loudly into the empty air, sobs convulsing through her body.

Artemis' heart clenched at the sight, pulling the mortal into a comforting hug, hoping to stop her cycle of self-harming and screaming as she prayed that the Fates would stop causing her such unnerving pain. The mortal in her arms did nothing but chant his name, desperately calling for her lost lover as she whimpered and gasped through her tears.

She latched onto the goddess more than she probably should, but was not even aware of the being's status and incredible power. An overwhelming protectiveness washed over the huntress, a protectiveness she knew, was something that she should feel when she manages to find a sibling she was actually fond of. A little sister she was able to care for without the dominating urge to strangle instead.

Once she finds out who had inflicted such pain unto her newly found companion, she would bring many inconveniences his way, and possible death. Or maybe she would just turn him into a little ant, small enough to be toyed with and easy to kill when bored. She will decide when the time comes.

"I'm sorry." The girl in her arms soon gasped in her haze of pain and depression, and then promptly collapsed, probably from her freezing hours alone in the forest before Artemis' appearance, or from the emotional session of sobbing into the latter's shoulder. It must have been draining.

Artemis solemnly stared at the limp body of the female in her arms before standing up slowly, her arms carrying the surprisingly light—very bony, actually, Artemis soon realized, girl, whom had the gaunt and haunting beauty of a nonliving china doll seeping back into her features. Except this time, she looked quieter, more at peace than her staring at the forest ground with her vacant eyes.

She jogged back to the campsite, her bow slung over her shoulder as she tried to move as less bumpy as she could to not wake up the woman in her arms.

"M'lady," her lieutenant, Thalia, stood up, her eyes locked on the newcomer in the goddess's arms. "Who is this?"

"A girl, I found sitting in the middle of the woods with a very broken expression." Artemis explained, pulling off her bow and sitting on a large boulder as she continued. "I could only guess that it was one of the works of man. I tried to make her speak of how she had gotten there and who caused her such pain, but she started spouting out a name. _Edward._" The goddess spat the name vehemently like it was an expletive, unable to hide her hostility. "She kept repeating his name, begging him to stay."

The other hunters looked at the girl with less of a guarded expression and more of an empathetic one. Each one of them had bad experience with men, and they also knew how hard it was to get over such experience. The girl looked like she went through hell and back, considering her tangled mess of a hair, her twisted ankle, her too pale complexion and her swollen nose and eyes, obvious signs of someone who has cried longer than what was necessary. Her face was smoothed over and white, all signs of her screaming or any of her struggle wiped away.

"Poor girl." Another hunter commented with a sad, gentle tone, having gone through the same heartbreak.

They watched her with a horrible sense of curiosity, unable to look away from the girl as they wondered how much pain she had already endured. But suddenly their attention was called from behind them, a long whistle resonating through the quiet forest. Artemis whipped around in alarm, her hand flinging to her bow, before her face melted into a familiar sort of annoyance, her rod straight posture relaxing a little.

"Well? Aren't you going to greet your favorite twin sibling?"


End file.
